Newt Gingrich for President

There is only one leader available who can unite the Republican Party, best Obama in debate, and carry a true conservative message forward: Newt Gingrich. We hope he will run. And, if he does, we predict that he will win.

There is a time to move toward the center and to embody a consensus that forms in our political life after vigorous debate. But this is not the time for that.

Confronted with new problems — an intractable recession, an incompetent administration that can’t clean up an oil spill, international appeasement of terrorists, and a budget deficit that threatens to swallow our nation — Americans want clear answers from the left and the right. Obama has offered his. Now the Republicans must offer theirs’. And we can have no better leader for such a task than Newt Gingrich.

Who else? We doubt that Mike Huckabee will run. Mitt Romney will run, but he is fatally flawed by his embrace and sponsorship of a healthcare bill in Massachusetts that approximates the horror Obama has passed in Congress. Can the man who passed mandatory health coverage in Massachusetts be trusted to repeal it nationally?

Sarah Palin undoubtedly helped John McCain in 2008. She delivered to him something no other VP candidate in American history ever has: a lead. Until her nomination, McCain never led Obama. For three weeks after her selection, he was ahead. He blew his lead by backing the TARP legislation, but that was not Sarah’s fault.

Since then, Sarah has more than justified her resignation as Alaska governor by her forthright embrace of true conservative candidates and values and her work with the wonderful tea party movement.

But Sarah comes with a lot of baggage, largely the doing of the liberal, sexist media. It will be tough to beat Obama. It will be tougher still to do so while overcoming her negatives, however unjustified they may be.

And there is a brilliant cast of second-tier candidates including Pawlenty of Minnesota, Thune of South Dakota, Pence and Daniels of Indiana, Ryan of Wisconsin, Santorum of Pennsylvania, DeMint of South Carolina, Rubio of Florida, Barber of Mississippi, Jindal of Louisiana, Perry of Texas, Bachmann of Minnesota. Did I leave any out?

But it will be hard to find a candidate with the intellectual heft of Newt or with his ability to articulate bold, new ideas. Gingrich feels the difference between socialism and freedom down to his core. He can match Obama’s words and overmatch his intellect. Newt’s teleprompter is inside his own mind.

As we go through the battles of 2011 and 2012 — fighting against tax increases and making the states and federal government come face to face with the need to slash spending — we need a spokesman and a leader like Newt Gingrich.

He did not run in 2008. But, back then, we did not understand the peril facing our nation. We did not realize that we were about to fall into the grasp of a dedicated leftist determined to foist socialist ideas on the United States. Now we do fathom, at long last, the severity of the threat. And we need Newt Gingrich to run.

Having faced Newt during the '90s, we’d love to fight by his side in 2012 to help to save our threatened nation.